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Instead of an introduction, I'll answer the question 'Why did you left out wonderful applications like Scribus, Inkscape, Cinelerra, Wine, QCAD etc?'. Well, because the article is about applications which I consider essential for daily use. Of course, some work with those every day, but not the majority. Secondly, if you ask why Amarok and not Banshee, or why KTorrent and not Deluge, well that's a personal preference. Unfortunately the article is about 10 and only 10 applications, so I can't include all of them here. Instead, I mentioned several (I know, not all) alternatives for each of the applications included here. Happy reading!
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Instead of an introduction, I'll answer the question 'Why did you left out wonderful applications like Scribus, Inkscape, Cinelerra, Wine, QCAD etc?'. Well, because the article is about applications which I consider essential for daily use. Of course, some work with those every day, but not the majority. Secondly, if you ask why Amarok and not Banshee, or why KTorrent and not Deluge, well that's a personal preference. Unfortunately the article is about 10 and only 10 applications, so I can't include all of them here. Instead, I mentioned several (I know, not all) alternatives for each of the applications included here. Happy reading!
1. Amarok - audio player
A lot has been told about Amarok 2 which is currently in the alpha stage, like it doesn't properly make use of space available, or that the new playlist looks too strange, and so on. This is not to be discussed here since Amarok 2 is still in alpha and there is enough time left until we will have the first stable, if not beta release.
Until then, the last stable Amarok release we have is 1.4.9.1, which is very solid and bug-free (well, I discovered a bug when updating the collection than removing several albums from it, but that's minor). Amarok is by far the most popular, full-featured and user-friendly audio player for Linux, and it includes support for scripts, Last.fm song submission, podcast support, a very powerful collection management system, ratings, visualisations, file browser, Magnatune integration, support for iPod and several more MP3/Ogg players. And these is just to mention a few. Amarok is and will most likely remain the most loved audio player available for the Linux platform.
Official website
Follow-ups: Banshee, Rhythmbox, Audacious
2. Firefox - web browser
I think Firefox needs no introduction. It's the most popular web browser for the Linux platform, supporting hundreds of themes and add-ons, with great management of passwords/cookies/history and pretty secure. The only problem I see at Firefox is that the 3.x series are extremely slow. Although the developers praised this release on the official website with numerous XUL 'speed improvements' and technologies, when in action Firefox is a lot slower than Konqueror or Epiphany for example. Otherwise, it's the best web browser for Linux.
Official website
Follow-ups: Konqueror, Opera, Epiphany, Kazehakase, Lynx, Links
3. K3b - CD/DVD burning application
Also known as (obviously since it's a KDE application) 'the CD Kreator', K3b is said to be the most powerful CD/DVD burner in Linux. Well the closed-source alternative called Nero exists, but the scope of this article is to include only open-source applications. K3b can burn CD/DVD images, can create ISO9660 images, it supports themes, it can create audio CDs, supports multi-session mode and much more. In my opinion, K3b is indeed the Linux burning application.
Official website
Follow-ups: Brasero
4. SMPlayer - video player
Using MPlayer as a frontend, SMPlayer lately became popular due to its rich features, support for DVDs (including ISO images), subtitles, and the wonderful ability to remember all the settings, including the time elapsed, from each file it plays. So if you watch a movie until its half, then close SMPlayer to do something else and return in half an hour, SMPlayer will open the movie exactly where you left it, with exactly the same settings it had. It's written in Qt 4 and comes in various languages, with support for icon themes (the default ones are great anyway).
Official website
Follow-ups: Kaffeine, VLC, Totem, Xine-UI, MPlayer, KPlayer
5. GIMP - image editor
GIMP is known as the most powerful image editor for Linux. Written in GTK and currently at stable release 2.4.6, GIMP includes image effects, plenty plugins and an interface praised by some and disliked by others. I honestly think the interface itself could be arranged in another way and that it is not very intuitive, but it's not such a big problem. The important fact is that I do my job with it, although that's only basic image manipulation, nothing fancy. For those who dislike GIMP, my advice is to read the help that comes with it first, because it's very comprehensive and it makes you get used to using it.
Official website
Follow-ups: Krita
6. KTorrent - BitTorrent client
I know, 3.1.2 for KDE4 is out, but since there still are many distributions out there who come with KDE 3.5.9 (including Debian Lenny and Kubuntu Hardy Heron - the LTS version), I decided to include stable version 2.2.7 for KDE3.
KTorrent is a full-featured BitTorrent client, with support for plugins, upload/download speeds limiting, possibility to download only certain files in a torrent, integrated search engine which can be customised and custom entries can be added. Another good competitor would be Deluge, and some say Azureus rocks, but I personally never used that one so I can't pronounce. KTorrent does its job very well and you can download tens of torrents at a fast rate until it becomes slow, and even so, it's still stable and reliable.
Official website
Follow-ups: Deluge, Azureus, BitTornado-GUI + plenty CLI clients
7. XChat - IRC client
Written in GTK and including support for C plugins and Perl/Python/Tcl scripting, XChat provides one of the most powerful graphical IRC clients for Linux. A version specifically designed for GNOME called xchat-gnome is also available. I preferred it over KVirc because it's faster and consumes less resources and over Konversation due to its event-based scripting support. Those who like a command line client should be happy with Irssi, a well-documented, solid and flexible IRC client for CLI.
Official website
Follow-ups: Konversation, KVirc, KSirc, Irssi, Kopete, Pidgin
8. Yakuake - terminal application
In my opinion this is the perfect console application for those who like to have fast access to a terminal and keep it running in the background all the time. Well this and using a docker application with your terminal application.
Yakuake is a Quake-style terminal emulator application for KDE which has the advantage to pop-up just like the consoles in FPS games by using the F12 global keyboard shortcut.
Official website
Follow-ups: Konsole, GNOME Terminal, Tilda, XTerm, Eterm, ROXTerm, rxvt, wterm
9. Gwenview
This is the image viewer for KDE, and a port is already in works for KDE4. Gwenview 1.4.2 presented some problems for me when dealing with very large JPG files by not rendering them correctly, the whole picture being black. The good thing is that it includes a file browser, a lot of useful plugins, and it's light and fast.
Official website
Follow-ups: Eye of GNOME
10. Nano
You may ask why did I put a command line text editor instead of a nice, graphical one like Kate, Gedit or Geany. And why Nano and not vi or Emacs? Well, because it's one of the lightest text editors out there, and it's also user-friendly. Since most of us who use a graphical file manager will usually use a graphical text editor when editing files which we own and a command line editor for root files, I think Nano is a universal choice.
Official website
Follow-ups: Kate, Gedit, Geany, Vim, Emacs
Updated: Aug 13, 2008 (Created: Aug 13, 2008, v0.1) Full Story |
